SportsWrap, 10/27/2026

Hey there, folks. We're live at our SportsWrap studios. What a night of baseball as the Tampa Bay Rays stave off elimination. We've got all the highlights and post-game reaction from Game 4 of the World Series coming up next. The Rays standing tall. They avoid elimination in a World Series Game 4 extra innings thriller. We will break it all down on SportsWrap starting right now. Box 11 SportsWrap, sponsored by your Toyota dealers. Well, well, well. How about the Tampa Bay Rays staving off elimination tonight? We've got it all for you right here on SportsWrap. I'm Kyle Kraska. He's Trent Rush. We watched this ballgame together. The Rays, hey, they had to find a way to win a game, and they won it in the most dramatic way possible. It really was. And you thought when Cooper Pratt hit that home run that Milwaukee had this World Series locked up. They were going to be the champs. And the Rays say not so fast. Really exciting ballgame tonight. I've got to tell you, it was the Milwaukee Brewers tonight with so many mistakes in this game. They just kept the door cracked open for Tampa. You can't do that in the World Series. And sure enough, this fall classic is getting extended by at least a night. All right, let's not waste any time. Let's get right to the highlights in case you missed it. My goodness, what a ball game. Rays trying to stave off elimination and try to force a game five tomorrow. Tied at one here in the fourth, Tampa Bay with a man on second. Johnny DeLuca grounds it to David Hamilton. He whiffs, trying to tag Junior Caminero, and then he throws it away. Raisley, 2-1 after this error. Yeah, I guess the hot corner was cold for the Brew Crew tonight. This is a mistake by David Hamilton, their first third baseman, trying to get the tag on Caminero. Just pick up the ball and throw it to first base. There were one out in the inning. That would have been the second out. That was a big mistake, and he compounded it by throwing it away and led to a run. Well, the good thing for Hamilton is he quickly made up for the error. The fifth inning clobbers the Griffin Jacks fastball to right field. a no-doubter solo shot that was it for jacks but this game now tied at two apiece the brewers with a chance to take the lead here in the top of the ninth of a man on, Garrett Mitchell skies one to left, Chandler Simpson leaps and makes the grab at the wall so Cooper Pratt was forced to go back to first base as he was trying to steal and that proved to be a huge moment because just a short time later Pratt trying to steal for a second time, initially called safe but the Rays challenge and they would reverse the call. He is out by the slimmest of margins, and this game heads into extra innings. We jump to the 12th inning. Pratt with the biggest moment of his career, crushing the Ian Seymour sweeper to left, and it is gone. A solo home run, Brewers take a 3-2 lead, and they can sniff a championship. But the Rays, they don't go down without a fight. Runners on the corners, no outs in the home half. DeLuca grounds it up the middle. Pinch runner Cedric Mullins comes around and scores. And this game is now tied at three apiece. And then two batters later. Bases loaded. Brewers with five on the infield. Pinch hitter Ben Williamson hits the chopper. And it gets out into right field. And that is that. Tampa Bay walking it off. The Rays win 4-3. and they stay alive to force a game five tomorrow. I think we just showed that we're not out of any game, hopefully not out of any series either. I think this is the way we've played all year. Maybe the last few games we haven't really showed it, but today we can make a lot of things happen really quickly, and that's something we take pride in. That's huge. I mean, yeah, you've got to take advantage. That team doesn't make those mistakes often, so when they do, you've really got to take advantage of them. Credit to him, put the ball in play, make something. All right, so they were down three games to none. It is now three games to one still in favor of Milwaukee. No team has ever come back from an 0-3 deficit to win a World Series. In fact, no team's ever even forced a Game 7 being down 0-3 in this World Series. The Red Sox, the only team in baseball history to do it. Of course, the ALCS back in 2004. And they won that Game 4 in the 12th inning, scoring two runs. So is this the magic that the Rays are looking for? Maybe so. What's interesting about this World Series right now is everything was set up so well for the Milwaukee Brewers. The way their bullpen was set up, who they were having slated to pitch in these games moving forward, it was all set for Milwaukee. Even if they didn't win tonight and maybe they would have lost casually, then you're all set to go for tomorrow in Game 5, get it done before it goes back to Milwaukee. But because the game went so long, because you had to use so many pitchers on it, it really changed things. Plus, you just can't make these kind of mistakes in a fall classic. He gets Joey Ortiz, and that's a tough play. I know Caminero runs well, but he was especially running well here. This ball by Hicks gets into left field. Caminero hustling, goes first to third. Every last drop of energy that he had in that leg that's banged up was there. And then after we saw Chandler Simpson not get the bunt down, he gets a base hit. That's followed by this base hit as that ties the game. Then it was this Ben Williamson chopper, as you mentioned, infield. And four singles after the error, how Tampa Bay was able to do it, it was the Brewers with the big bop in the top of the 12th, but it was contact created by these Rays that are going to send these Brewers fans that traveled south, I guess, unhappy, at least for a night. I guess they had to extend their Florida vacation, at least for a little bit. Fifteen different pitchers used in this ballgame tonight, and we went a lot of innings with a whole lot of nothing, two hits and two hits on each side, and then finally they exploded for some runs in the 12th inning. Let's go back into some of the middle innings of this game, though. Some pretty good defense. We've been kind of knocking Tampa Bay at times for their lack of defense, but we saw some pretty decent defense out of DeLuca. Yeah, we did see good stuff from DeLuca tonight, I thought especially. And really, all in all, this was a pretty clean defensive game for the Tampa Bay Rays. And as a Tampa team, really their infield defense has kind of left something to be desired, generally speaking, on the corners of the Ronda and Caminero, who obviously make up for it with their bats. But what you're getting as far as outfield defense is concerned is pretty good. And that showed up tonight, including in the third inning. I mean, this is a play that Bowers drives the ball pretty deep. Jack's got hit a little bit tonight. He had nine different outs or at-bats ended going over 95 miles an hour. Long run there for DeLuca. This is a really spectacular play coming up to make a diving snag. Take one away from Contreras, who has had so much go right for him in this fall classic. At that time, DeLuca says, no, this one can go our way finally. And that's a heck of an effort. And it was really the Rays tonight doing all the little things that we've seen the Brewers be able to do in the first three games of this series. Tonight, the script was flipped for the Rays. What did you make of the starting pitching in this game? When we go back to Griffin Jacks, last time we saw him was against the Guardians. He gave up three earned runs in a loss there. What did you make of him tonight? Yeah, I thought he was effective, but he really was getting hit pretty hard in this game and maybe stayed in an inning too long from what I saw from Griffin Jacks. I mentioned all the hard contact off him. And for the most part, it was hit to a lot of defenders. Early on in this game, it looked like he was going to start very well for Jacks. But then he had a couple of walks, was able to get out of it, and really limited the damage. But again, early on, it was good. And then you saw the wheels start to come off a little bit as the Brewers turned up the heat on him, able to bring this run in on Griffin Jacks. Nine times tonight, I mentioned the ball hit 95 miles an hour or harder off of him. Five of those were outs, but four of them weren't. And this David Hamilton home run ends up being the knockout blow. This ball was absolutely smashed at the trough. And again, all the things that you thought were going to go Milwaukee's way tonight, including that Hamilton homer, looked like things were headed their direction. But this Rays team just kept hanging around and did just enough to get it into extra innings, finally get to this Milwaukee bullpen just a little bit, and it was just enough to get a W. And kind of an ideal win in the way the Rays did it because they went through so much of that bullpen for the Brewers. So now you start to look ahead to tomorrow and you think, well, you got Jacob Mizorowski on the bump for the Brewers, so great. But if they can get him out of the game relatively early, you used a lot of your high-leverage guys, in fact, all of them tonight. Yeah, and let's be honest. It's not like Mizorowski has gone all that deep in the game. So we've seen Mizorowski have some pretty short outings. So that bullpen is going to have to be prepared to be tested tomorrow. Uribe went two innings. Ashby went two innings. They're going to be forced. Okay. We're going to take our first time out here on this special World Series edition of Sports Wrap, but we have still much more to come from game four of a thrilling World Series. Suddenly, this thing's 3-1, and hey, anything can happen. We're back with more right after this. 611 Sports Wrap is brought to you by your Toyota dealers. It's the easy choice sales event at your Toyota dealers. Check out the biggest selection of Tacomas and Tundras. We make it easy. Welcome back. Ben Williamson comes off the bench, ends this one in the 12th inning thanks to a clutch walk-off base hit to right field. The Rays survive. They win 4-3 in Game 4, and they force a Game 5 tomorrow night once again at the Trop in St. Petersburg, Florida. Welcome you back inside our Fox 11 studios. He's Trent Rush. I'm Kyle Kraska. I'd hate to be Shane Droton tonight. I mean, he comes in in that 12th inning, and he gives up four base hits. He doesn't get anybody out. But what a job by the bullpen for the Brewers until that moment. We were talking while we were watching the game, a guy like Aaron Ashby, and the fact that since September 12th, he'd gone 22 innings without allowing a single run. They got them right there, and they got the lead in the 12th, but Drouin comes in and he just had nothing. They did, but every time that bullpen gate swings open, or I guess in this case coming in from the foul territory, every time you bring a reliever into the game, you're running the risk of something happening that could go poorly. As great as the Brewers' bullpen has been this postseason, even this group is not perfect. Now, we saw a lot of good stuff tonight, I thought, from the Brewers' bullpen, as you mentioned, but when you get later in the game, that's where we started to see at some point, could it stay perfect? And it did not. You know that I was in the sports office going to the bottom of the 12th inning and I was yelling out, why don't you bring in the Miz right now? I know he's your Game 5 starter, but you've got a chance to finish this thing and you need three outs. And remember, a la Chris Sale back in 2018, I hate to bring up that memory for Dodger fans, but he came in and he was a starter, came in and he finished the job. And he got Manny Machado to strike out to end that game. I'll add this too. You even said, hey, maybe they get a leadoff home run and that would be enough to give him some time to warm up. Sure enough, that's exactly how it plays out. So they had three outs to give and that would have given him sufficient time, allegedly so, to warm up in the bullpen and bring him in. It should have. And then you were saying, no, no, no, no, no, no. And then at one moment you said, okay, maybe that's not a batter. Well, you said it in like the ninth or tenth. And by the time you got to the twelfth and you'd see how this bullpen had been reeling, you'd already seen Ashby have to go a couple of innings tonight. You saw Uribe go a couple of innings tonight. I mean, he comes in in the fifth inning. I was a little surprised Pat Murphy brought him in so early in this game. I think he could have waited. And it might have changed some things. And, yes, he did his job. Paul did his job as well in the seventh inning. And then you see Trevor McGill come in to face one batter. and Yandy Diaz, and that's another one that has to hurt looking back on it. I didn't mind it in the moment, but you wanted to get to Ashby, who was excellent, got through the ninth, did his thing, facing the top of this Tampa lineup, then comes back out for the tenth. Again, two more innings for Ashby tonight, but all these guys having to work so much, and then McGill really didn't. McGill didn't pitch in game three either, so he's fresh, he's available, but you'd already used him for the game. When you're looking at your best options, I think that the way the bullpen stacked up tonight, you felt like if you're Milwaukee, let's just get this thing over with. Get it done tonight. Use Mizell in that 12th inning. Pat Murphy opts not to do that. Instead, we'll see him in game five tomorrow. All right, and you're going to see him with plenty of rest. Meanwhile, for the Rays, presumably they go with Drew Rasmussen, but he started game two, so that's three days rest. However, in that game two loss, he only went three and two-thirds of an inning. Yeah, you don't have a choice right now if you're Kevin Cash. You have to use Rasmussen tomorrow. I don't care how short the rest is. You're down 3-1 in the World Series. If you want to win a championship, you've got to go to your best guys. And you're right. It wasn't like it was a long outing for Rasmussen, who was gifted that 4-0 lead in Game 2 and immediately gave up two runs. It was not a real crisp Rasmussen in this game. You see this one bleed through to lead to some of the action that we saw from this Milwaukee Brewers just relentless lineup. but you have to turn to the guy that's been who's carried you so much of this season I don't care that he's on short rest you don't have any options right now your back is fully against the wall Rasmussen has to be the answer for Kevin Cash tomorrow we were trying to figure out the Kevin Cash puzzle as he went through his rotation today is through his bullpen and Nick Martinez comes into this ball game potentially a game five starter but used him early your thoughts on that Yeah, I thought that was a little strange, actually, where they used him. I think maybe the hope for Kevin Cash was, well, maybe you don't have to use him. You know, either the game gets away and you don't need him, or you're able to build a big enough lead to where you don't have to use him. But they did. And I thought that if you're going to use him in this situation anyway, well, you might as well have just started Nick Martinez and let him do his thing starting the game fresh instead of coming out of the bullpen. Again, very effective in this game. He did an excellent job tonight to continue to keep Tampa in this game. whose bullpen has not been great. Brian Baker has been outstanding the entire season. We saw him pitch for the first time all-fall classic in this game tonight, but they needed to get a bridge to Baker, and Martinez was that, was excellent. Now they're going to need a similar kind of effort, maybe even a little bit better tomorrow out of Drew Rasmussen. What do you think? We talked yesterday about, okay, it's 3-0, and this series is pretty much over, and Kevin Cash actually sounded kind of dejected at the end of yesterday's game, right? almost like surrendering uh but they they find a way to win a game now if you can find a way to beat the Miz tomorrow and you got a flight back to Milwaukee do they have a chance i mean let's yeah kid ourselves it's still 3-1 yeah obviously everything is still very much in the Brewers favor right now okay but the way this game played out tonight it was the perfect storm of everything that could go wrong for the Brewers did and the only thing that could have been worse is if they used Mizorowski and still didn't win the game. It's the only thing that could have set Milwaukee back any further here. They're obviously still in control. They're going to be the favorites tomorrow. They have their ace. The best pitcher in this series is going to be on the mound for them in Game 5 tomorrow, but I do think the door is slightly cracked open for this Tampa team because of how this game went tonight. I think generally, okay, had they just lost this game in nine innings and let's say the Rays won this game 5-2 and you move on, then I think Milwaukee is just fine, but because this game went as long as it did, because as much bullpen as it did, I think that really hurts the Brewers, and I do think Tampa's got a shot. Well, you look at the top of the lineup here for the Brewers tonight, and these guys have been so clutch, but there's a lot of zeros up here. You got Bowers 0 for 6, and Yellich 0 for 3, and Contreras 0 for 4, and Terang 0 for 4. That's not going to get it done. Well, there's a reason why we haven't seen a team ever have a 9-game win streak in the postseason, okay? It's very hard to do. Brewers had won eight in a row. To sweep, especially in LCS, and then to do it in the World Series, it just doesn't happen. So it would have been very tough for Milwaukee to do that. Still doesn't take anything away from them. They're still the heavy favorites to win this World Series. But there is a chance for Tampa Bay because of how tonight's game played out. Made it very interesting. All right, let's hear from Rays manager Kevin Cash. Here he is after the game. We can start showing a lot more moving forward. The innings like that can create a lot of momentum for a team. That's a really good team, and I'm glad we had some things go our way. We've had some things not go our way. We haven't made the most of some opportunities, but tonight it seemed like going down 3-2 right there in the 12th or whatever it was that nobody came in hanging their heads. It was just about how do we get one across, and then how do we get the second one across. And obviously we hope to hear from Pat Murphy. What does he say to his club after this? I mean, you were three outs away from your first ever World Series championship in franchise history, and now, you know, you have this setback. I mean, this, you know, he's pushed all the right buttons so far this entire series. It just didn't work out in the bottom of the 12th. You tell Joey Ortiz, I love you, I trust you, and we're not going to go away from you. We're going to keep playing. That's what you say in that situation right there. I think that's all you can say. As a team, this Brewers team has played so well. In fact, I don't think any message needs to come from Pat Murphy tonight. These guys obviously believe they're still going to get it done. Yeah, they dropped this game tonight, but, you know, they had been on such a tear. They had one loss in a month coming into this game. So the way this Milwaukee team has played, I don't think you let one game get to you. That said, because of the errors, because they did play a little sloppy tonight, I think that, you know, maybe a one-on-one, hey, Joey, we got you. Don't worry about it. We're good. Teammates even picking them up in the dugout. That's a sign of a really strong team. I love that about these Brewers. But I think that's probably the one guy that's feeling awful tonight, Jerome, as well. But for the most part, I think that this Brewers team is fine. You don't really need to have some kind of rah-rah message. You're still up 3-1 in the World Series. We almost saw history. We did see history, but we almost saw more history tonight. No team had ever swept a four-game championship series and then swept a four-game World Series. They had a chance to do that. They don't do that. So you wonder, does that weigh on them maybe a little bit as they go into the next game? Yeah, it might. because you have a chance to do something special, and it just gets prolonged. You're ready. It's a long season. You're ready to pop that champagne. You're ready to get it done. And now you've got to wait a little bit longer. And every night you wait, a little bit of doubt creeps into your mind just a bit. It's incredibly rare for teams to come back from being down 3-0. You mentioned it's never happened before in the World Series. I saw a stat, Kyle. I think in the last 25 times the team went up 3-0, only five times had even a Game 5 been forced. So we'll see what happens, but obviously the Brewers are in complete control. Okay, we're going to take another time out here in the special World Series edition of Sports Trap with more from Game 4 of the Fall Classic coming up. Welcome back. Pinch hitter Ben Williamson with the chopper through the right side, scoring the game-winning run for the Tampa Bay Rays as they walk it off, beating the Brewers 4-3, and they stay alive to force a Game 5 tomorrow, which brings us to this. Where do you watch Game 5 tomorrow? Of course you're watching right here on Fox 11. We've got the pregame show and first pitch coming up just after 5 o'clock. And when it's all said and done, be sure to stick around to hear Trent's brilliant analysis of that game. What do you think? Who wins tomorrow? I don't know. I think that Milwaukee still has everything set up in their favor. I think the Brewers get it done tomorrow. Hey, listen, I've got to ask you a little bit about Jackson Chourio. Two more hits tonight from the leadoff spot. He now has 10 in his first four World Series games, only the second guy ever to do that. Yeah, the last guy was Babe Ruth, and now it's Jackson Chourio at 22 years old. It's amazing what he's been able to do. He's a catalyst for them, and I think how goes Jackson Chourio? Often how go the Milwaukee Brewers? He had two hits tonight. He was able to step up, but when you look at between Bowers, Yelich, Contreras, and Turang, their core four in the middle of that order, they were 0 for 17 in this game tonight. They need other contributions. And yes, Chourio is doing his thing, but they need other guys to step up as well if they are going to get the job done tomorrow. Guys that have stepped up and exceeded expectations this entire postseason. I don't necessarily have a rooting interest in this World Series, but I'll be honest, I'm excited that we get to see another game. I mean, it's just more baseball. It's been really good baseball. That's been the fun thing about this. Look, Tampa probably should have won Game 2. Game 3 was a blowout, obviously, but they win tonight. This has been a much more competitive series than maybe what the 3-1s suggested. Right? 3-1 run ballgames? You can't ask for more than that. Hey, that's going to do it for our show. Thanks for sticking around and watching. He's Trent Rush. I'm Kyle Kraska. The entire crew, enjoy the rest of your evening, and we'll see you tomorrow for Game 5 of the World Series.